thank you, everybody, for listening to this and for including me. Um, I think a person's career is always a long, winding road, and it's never stratospheric the way we imagine it would be that one day we wake up and we have this great and important job. So I would say, How did I get to where I got today? Um, I think the hallmarks of me and my career or I worked really hard, and I have strong ethics, and I believe that, um, I always do what I say I'm going to do. I believe in performance. I believe in integrity. I believe in reliability. And so I would say, That's kind of my thing. If you give me something to do, I'll do it. Um, so my story is a long and windy road. Um, I actually always thought I would be a professor, and what happened is when I was in grad school, I finished my PhD. Then I brought it to my advisor. He said to me, I'm a man and you're a woman. It took me six years to get my PhD. It's going to take you seven, so go back in the lab for three years and then come talk to me and I quit. Quit graduate school, and I decided maybe I wasn't gonna be a professor after all. And, um, basically went through a lot of thinking and realized that I actually did like business and that maybe my scientific background would be really valuable in business. And so that was the approach I took. And I took jobs that where I used my science background. But I was more of a business person, and I actually found I like that. So that's not to say I wouldn't have been a good professor, but I think we all have different. I'm gonna say facets of our personality. And sometimes one avenue doesn't work or doesn't work in that moment. And you have to kind of hate what you could do and move it. Move on. Yeah, so that's what I did. So I would say that was the most fundamental experience that shaped my career path.

Okay, so, um, I live in Southern California, which doesn't really matter, except I work for a company in the UK And so the times difference is huge. And so I typically get up at five. In the morning or 4. 30. I work till noon with the UK. Then in the afternoon, I work with the U. S. And then in the evening, I work with Japan, so I probably work. I don't know. I'd say 14 hours a day, plus weekends. Um, sometimes I'll take an hour or two off in the afternoon. All right, Um, and this is part of me kind of trying to do it all, which I admitted the flaw, Um, so the responsibilities and decisions. So I manage a team of probably six or seven people. I I'm not a good person. Accounting and bragging. So I manage a team of people, and what our role is is to go out and bring scientific projects to the company and find customers that are interested in trying out quantum computing and willing to work with us. And then we have to not only find them, but we have to convince them that were the right partner, and then we have to convince them to pay us and to pay us the right amount of money. So it's it takes some skill. Um, it's a lot of networking, and it's also a lot of strategy. So I also handle some marketing and product road maps is well, so my top three priorities are Well, I have to think, bring in revenue. Um, secondly, um, understand the competition and be nimble in moving our product development along in a strategic way. And probably the third priority is to be visible for our company and contribute back to the market so that people understand that we're not just that we're here to stay, and we want to give back to the community and not just take, take, take.

um so one of the challenges is how do you sell something and how do you honestly represent it? So quantum computing is a technology that is just developing, and so I can never go to someone and say it's going to cure cancer or it's going to do something really dramatic. And so I think one of the challenges is how to get someone excited about a technology that's not there yet on do do It in an honest way. So I think that's one of the challenges. I think, Um, the second challenge is there's a lot of noise right now. There's a lot of people entering this industry, and you have to focus on yourself for your company, and you have to focus on helping your customers understand what's noise and what's riel. And then probably the third pain point is is I come from a very strong corporate background, so I'm used to a certain amount of rigor, and I'm not sure rigor is the right word, but a certain amount of discipline or a certain amount of, um, discipline and how you run a job and how you run a company and how you run products, and I think I have to. I have some of that to bring to the startup, and I While you don't want to turn it into a major corporation, you wanna add a little bit of some structure. And so it's always a bit of a dance to How much structure do I add? Is this too much? This is too little. What is the evolution? Can I do it all at once? Can I do it a little bit of a time? And so in my case, it's a little bit of a time, um, slow steps to build. Andi, I have to be patient. So I would say patience is hard because I have a vision and I want the vision. You know, you want your vision now, like we all want our vision now, right? And you have toe modulate your vision and understand that you're building